


Hotshot

by burytheacorn



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: #AFzine, A Fowl Mood, A Fowl Mood: An Artemis Fowl Zine, Artemis Fowl Zine, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 16:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22259077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burytheacorn/pseuds/burytheacorn
Summary: Flight Instructor Raine Vinyáya faces off against a mystery cadet.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Hotshot

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my fanfic for the Artemis Fowl Fanzine: A Fowl Mood! Orders are still open for the PDF version and the extra loot, available here:  
> https://afowlmood.bigcartel.com/

_Maybe all this tech_ has _made us stupider_. Raine Vinyáya raked a frustrated hand through her hair and watched yet another cadet crash himself into the side of a virtual magma chute and get subsequently incinerated by crackling holographic lava. She terminated the simulation with an aggressive slap to the keyboard.

Pneumatic gravity clamps hissed and lowered the sealed training pod to dock level. Vinyáya left the cadet inside the pod to anguish over his failure for another minute, choosing instead to glare at his flight stats now scrolling past on her control panel. The Flight Instructor scowled.

So many superfluous controls! In Vinyáya’s day, there were no external proximity sensors, no temperature controlled cockpits, and no automatic docking protocols. All an officer used to have when riding the hotshots was a harness, an accelerator, and gut instinct. Vinyáya’s first flight out of the simulator had almost killed her -- she’d tried to rely on her pod’s auto-releasing fin stabilization technology (standard issue in pods today, but akin to sliced bread back then) and the sensors had glitched and smashed her into the chute wall. Quick improvisational thinking and raw flying talent had saved her, not fancy tech, and those were the qualities that had turned a regular cadet into the LEP’s first-ever female officer, then captain, and now Flight Instructor.  
  
Vinyáya smashed a button and the pod door burst open, leaking sweaty air and hints of piss into the training amphitheater. As usual, the trainee had wet himself in the crash. The cadet in question tumbled promptly out of the cockpit, body shaking with the simulated impact. “Get down, Kelp,” she snapped. “And go clean yourself up.” She turned back to the screens and reset the simulation, the gravity apparatus whirring back into place around the practice pod. Behind her, the cadet scrambled to get his visor up and then retched into what Vinyáya fervently hoped was the refuse bin.  
  
Then she took a deep breath and turned to face her class.  
  
Fifty-nine helmeted heads stared back at her, visors blacked out. Every one of them was the same, relying too much on their high-tech tools and never on her tutorials. The Flight Instructor struggled to hide her disappointment. Her talents were wasted here on these faceless numbskulls while the Council hemmed and hawed about whether they could risk promoting a female to Wing Commander. If any of her students had even a spark of talent, Vinyáya knew she could have handled the post. But standing outside a centuries-old simulator while countless cadets careened straight to their virtual deaths, day after day after day… Vinyáya clenched her jaw and shook the anger away.  
  
“Next!” she barked.  
  
The Flight Instructor recalibrated the simulation as a cadet climbed the metal stairs to the docking platform. Out of the corner of her eye, Vinyáya took in the opaque visor and ill-fitting jumpsuit, noting that it was cuffed up at the ankles. “You’re up, kid,” she said shortly, and gestured at the open pod door.  
  
The cadet ducked inside with a terse nod and the pod sealed.  
  
Vinyaya pulled up the cockpit cams and grading rubric on her monitor. Inside the pod, the cadet strapped in and calibrated the voice controls, then moved on to adjust the bucket seat and experimentally flex the outer coasting fins. Vinyáya folded her arms and glared impatiently at the screens. Normally cadets were granted these few seconds to get, if not comfortable, at least used to the close cockpit, but Vinyáya was feeling vengeful today.  
  
“Time’s up,” she muttered, and initiated the simulation.  
  
Immediately the giant wall monitors crackled to life. All the cadets leaned in, eyes locked on the screens. One was a fish-eyed look at the cadet in the pod, another displayed the pod’s control panel, and yet another showed the simulation as the cadet saw it, both for context and entertainment.  
  
Vinyáya gazed raptly at the screens, hands on the simulation controls. She could introduce any obstacle, mechanical or environmental, with just a few keystrokes, and was not above making things difficult for her students. Real life required improvisation. If her students didn’t learn how to improvise now, they’d be incinerated on their first flare.  
  
Inside the simulation, the gaping black abyss of a magma chute loomed just before the pod’s pointed prow. A bulb of yellow heat began to bloom in the depths of the chute, and the fire-hardened walls glowed scarlet with the impending rush of lava. The pod’s shell began to vibrate; tiny pebbles and bits of loamy debris were sent skidding over its pocked aluminum surface by the acrid core air. Heat sensors mounted outside the pod shattered instantly.  
  
The cadet’s hands wrapped around the joysticks and the pod dropped. Molten lava rushed up to meet it and the pod was blasted upwards. Hurricane-grade wind and electric flames engulfed the tiny titanium egg, buffeting it this way and that, rattling its wiry mechanics until it was hurled sideways.  
  
Vinyáya’s fingers flew over the holographic keys as she adjusted wind speed and heat on a dime. Operating this system had taken longer to learn than flying. So far, the trainee was doing moderately well; the undocking and drop-in had been pulled off without as much as a scraped hull, which Vinyáya could grudgingly admit was impressive. But she had been waiting for a challenge, and her bad mood flew out her fingers and directly into the simulation.  
  
With a slash, Vinyáya opened a hole in the side of the chute. The hole was tiny, barely wider than the width of the stabilizer fins and toothed with protruding stalactites. The new opening acted like a suction tube in the vacuum of the chute, and the wind tornadoed the sim-pod directly into it. There was nothing the cadet could do.  
  
A vicious grin curled across Vinyáya’s face. This was one of her hardest tests -- combination flying. As the Flight Instructor, Vinyáya was responsible for teaching not only flares, but wings, shuttles, and precision aircraft as well. These teardrop pods were built for the chutes, and couldn’t handle precision of any kind. Vinyáya knew this intimately, which was exactly why she kept using this variant. It was her Kobayashi Maru, her no-win trap.  
  
The pod twirled right into her tunnel, spinning over and over itself and sending the gravity apparatus haywire. Vinyáya heard the sound of impending sick from behind her and whirled to face the class. “Get to the bins, cadet,” she ordered, and then gestured proudly up to the screens. “Pay attention, class -- you’re about to learn exactly how not to maneuver a titanium pod.”  
  
The helmets started blankly back at her. Then one cadet, braver than the rest, raised a hand and pointed wordlessly at the screen.  
  
Vinyáya raised an eyebrow, then slowly turned and faced the monitors. Immediately, her jaw dropped and all her belligerence evaporated. The kid was doing it. Somehow -- and Vinyáya definitely didn’t know how -- the kid was flying. The pod wove between the spikes at breakneck speed, fins extended to their fullest as the bulbous craft soared impossibly through the tiny gaps. Wind whipped over the fins and hardened bullets of magma sliced scars finer than Tunnel Blue claws into the hull.  
  
The Flight Instructor’s hands dropped to the controls. She cranked up the headspeed, but the cadet fired the thrusters and spun through it. Vinyáya flung new spikes out of the walls exactly as the pod hurled itself past them, sent spouts of lava showering down the center of the tunnel, and then dropped the temperature so abruptly the walls cracked with ice. But the cadet flexed the pod’s fins like muscles, commanding them as naturally as a sprite does his wings, and soared.  
  
Vinyáya found herself smiling again, but this time, it was the thrill of a challenge. Whoever this kid was, they were good. Almost as good as the Flight Instructor herself had been. The game was on. Let’s dance, kid.  
  
Nothing could stop the pod. Gesturing wildly, Vinyáya snapped away the tunnel and replaced it instantly with a black fortress maze crawling with hostiles. Snarling trolls leapt straight out of the stone and lunged at the darting craft, but the cadet beat them back with blasts from the sonic cannons. Vinyáya was astonished at the trainee’s versatility. She tore the maze away and sent the pod plummeting downwards towards a twinkling human city, acid smoke billowing from burst fuel cells and obscuring almost all visibility. The cadet yanked back on the thrusters and deployed the emergency drag-chute, then activated the craft’s rudimentary shielding technology. The dull aluminum drop dissolved in a shiver of pixelated cloud, and the pod rode clean topside thermals out over the ocean.  
  
But the Flight Instructor wasn’t done. She hesitated just a moment, her hand hovering over the button. It was unfair of her, she knew, but Vinyáya was too curious not to push the kid’s limits. She thumbed a key and the pod clanked and died.  
  
For a heartbeat, nothing happened inside the pod. On the cabin monitor, the cadet seemed to be frozen, caught off guard for the first time since the simulation had begun. But gravity waits for no fairy, and the pod began to fall. Stars turned to silver streaks outside the craft and the spiderweb of lights rushed up towards the dashboard. Blood roared in Vinyáya’s ears and she couldn’t take her eyes off the monitor, watching as the cadet fought against the g-force to unstrap the harness, curl gloved hands into fists, and punch the ejector button as hard as Vinyáya had ever seen it punched.  
  
The cadet flew upwards through the air as the craft spiraled to earth, and the whole class erupted in roaring cheers. Vinyáya was breathing hard, exhilarated from the chase, and allowed herself a moment of pride in this mystery flyer. The kid needed technique, but the raw talent and instinct was there. Vinyáya cut the simulation and motioned for the class to settle down. All eyes were on the gravity apparatus as it slowed and rumbled to a halt.  
  
The pod door hissed open and the cadet stumbled shakily out, cuffed jumpsuit drenched with sweat. A half-grin tugged at the corners of Vinyáya’s mouth as a round of sparse applause and whoops swept through the auditorium. She nodded at the cadet standing at attention.  
  
“Now that was flying,” she said quietly. “What’s your name, kid?”  
  
The cadet hesitated, then reached up to the blacked-out visor. With one swift, decisive motion the helmet came off, and the cadet shook out a tousled shock of close-cropped auburn hair. Straight-backed and determined, she met Vinyáya’s delighted gaze.  
  
“Holly Short, sir,” she said. “Trainee.”  
  
Vinyáya didn’t bother to hide her triumphant smile. “Holly Short,” she said, “Think you can fly like that again?”  
  
Holly gave her a quick nod, eyes blazing. “Yes, sir.”  
  
“Alright hotshot,” said Vinyáya, “then strap in. It’s a hard flight up to the top, and we’ve a long way left to go.” She winked at Holly, then turned back and reset the simulation.


End file.
